Women's exploitation lies at the heart of a modern-day underclass that keeps the machinery of civilised Britain well-oiled, writes Rahila Gupta.

In the UK,
we are coming to the end of a year stuffed full with events commemorating the
bicentenary of the abolition
of the slave trade. Only a few of these events have acknowledged the hollowness
of these commemorations when slavery continues to thrive and affects more
people today than during the historic transatlantic trade. As usual, it is
women who bear the brunt of this inhuman trade. Although the hidden nature of
modern slavery makes the statistics unreliable, there is no doubt that more
women than men are trafficked.

Women are disproportionately affected by poverty and are
over-represented among those trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation, for
domestic work and for labour in the care sector. A 2004 US State Department report
records that 70 percent of the approximately 800,000 people
trafficked across international borders each year are women. The majority of
these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. Non-sexual forced
labour is made up of 44 percent men
and boys, and 56 percent women
and girls (International
Organisation of Labour, 2005).

21st
century slavery

This article is the second in a series on openDemocracy
marking the "16
Days of Activism against Gender Violence" from 25 November - 10
December, an annual mobilisation aimed at heightening global awareness of
violence against women

Also in openDemocracy on the 16 Days theme, part of our
overall 50.50 coverage, a multi-voiced
blog where women around the world contributeWhile researching my book Enslaved: The New British
Slavery, I had no pre-conceived ideas about the gender balance in the
five stories I would choose to tell. I ended up with two women, two girls and a
man, a proportion which is roughly representative of those enslaved here. Farhia
Nur, a devout Somali woman, was caught up in the civil war, raped and forcibly
married to her rapist. She escaped to Britain, lost her application for asylum,
went underground, had no money and was forced into prostitution; Natasha, a
Russian girl was trafficked to Britain at the age of 17, raped and assaulted by
her pimps, and prostituted; Amber, an Asian woman was forced into a marriage,
imprisoned, starved and sexually assaulted by her husband and in-laws; Naomi,
an illiterate street child from Sierra Leone was brought to London at the age
of 15 to work as a domestic slave, ran away, was picked up by a man who
prostituted her, ran away again and discovered that she was pregnant. Finally, Liu Bao Ren, a Chinese man was smuggled in by the
snakeheads (Chinese trafficking gangs), whose brother died in the Dover
58 tragedy - in which 58 Chinese illegal immigrants died in a lorry entering
the UK - and worked long hours for little or no pay in the construction
industry under terrible health and safety conditions.

They all had one thing in common: their
immigration status was uncertain. An individual is powerless while her/his passport
is in the hands of somebody else whether it is an ‘employer', a ‘spouse', an
‘agent', a ‘trafficker', or indeed the government as in the case of failed
asylum seekers. The defining feature of modern slavery is entrapment -
physical, psychological and financial - often sustained through violence. While
no human being legally owns another human being today, men, women and children
continue to be bought and sold. Current
immigration legislation plays a central role in keeping people trapped in
slavery.

Apart from the stories in the book,
there are thousands of others who are enslaved in the production of our food,
in the running of our homes, the care of our elderly and disabled and
scandalously, in keeping our sex industry alive. The government argues that
more draconian immigration controls will stop the people smugglers and
traffickers. In fact, this strategy has failed. Perhaps it suits the government
to tighten controls: it creates a larger pool of easily exploited ‘illegal'
workers whose presence drives wages down. The more I investigated this issue, the
more I became convinced that only the abolition
of immigration controls will lift a large chunk of people out of slavery in
Britain.
Each time controls are part-liberalised in a piecemeal fashion (and that's not
often) they create further nooks and crannies in which injustice and slavery
flourish.

An open solution

The debate around immigration is so
hysterical that to raise the issue of open borders is to invite ridicule. It is
a widely held belief that Britain
will be inundated. However, this is not borne out by the trends. In general,
migration follows jobs. If the UK
economy is attracting migrants, it is because its economy is booming. We
already have open
borders with Europe, with a total population of half a billion people, and
we have not been swamped. Despite headlines in the popular press about the
numbers of Polish people who have arrived, most of them have been soaked up by
a labour hungry market. Even when there is a humanitarian crisis, most people
flee to the next town or just across the closest border. Despite the horrendous
living conditions created by the US and UK invasion
of Iraq, only 8000 Iraqis have sought asylum in Britain (only 20 per cent
of whom have been allowed to stay) as compared to 1 million in Syria and
800,000 in Jordan.

Most mainstream debate on UK immigration
concentrates on the needs of the British economy, whether the migrants coming
in to the country match the needs of the economy and whether the walls that
have been put up to keep out ‘undesirables' are solid enough. Broader questions
which impact on immigration have not really been raised: British
multi-nationals, for example, displace communities in developing countries in
the process of building dams or mining for minerals and generate refugees and
economic migrants, some of whom may turn up on our doorstep. As far as I am
aware, no one has attempted to draw up a balance sheet which measures the
number of jobs generated and taxes paid by these companies to the treasury
against the immigrants who arrive on British shores. Ditto with the defence
industry which is worth billions of pounds and where sales of arms are often
made to countries
in conflict. We see the direct consequences of that policy in the number of
refugees claiming asylum.

We need the equivalent of a Stern
review on climate change to explore these broader questions and to examine
the benefits and drawbacks of immigration because the movement of peoples is an
irresistible fact of globalisation. It is estimated that Britain will need 500,000 new
workers entering the economy every year in order to sustain the current
pensions system. We need to add into the equation the number of migrants who
contribute to pensions and then do not stick around to receive the benefits,
the subsidies made by the third world in terms of providing qualified migrants
to the first world and the fact that remittances
by migrants is double British aid (an estimated £8 billion to £3.8 billion in
international aid) - to drag this highly poisoned debate a little closer to the
centre ground.

While open borders may not completely
eradicate slavery, it remains a crucial weapon in the fight against slavery in Britain.
When Lithuania
joined the EU, for example, the number of women being trafficked into the sex trade increased. However,
unlike other slaves, Lithuanian women are now in no danger of deportation and
have the right to full protection of the state once they are rescued or run
away. We also need to criminalise
the buying of sexual services to make a dent in the number of women
trafficked to Britain as happened in Sweden and tighten employment laws so that
employers who exploit workers are penalised.

As the fourth richest country in
the world which prides itself on its respect for human rights, we can no longer
ignore the human rights of an underclass that keeps the machinery of civilised Britain
well-oiled.